A Failed Entity - V

Source: The Hitavada Date: 24 Jun 2017 12:47:43

THIS description of Pakistan has come from countless quarters. Everybody and anybody who has some position of influence, or who has a position that makes him or her privy to certain classified information, has felt similarly -- that Pakistan is an eternally client-State that depends for everything on outsourced providers of certain services. This is nothing but a global assertion that Pakistan is an eternally client-State, on a shopping spree for small things and big things in its machinery of governance. And this condition of being an eternal client has little to do with international trade etc; it has everything to do with its virtual sale-out to service-provider agencies. A failed State, so to say!This failure is intrinsic, that is, it stems from within, from a point of extreme lack of national pride and confidence in itself, located deep within Pakistan’s collective consciousness. Or better still, Pakistan’s sense of insecurity and inferiority emerges from the fact that since its inception, the powers that be have never tried to build the country’s internal capabilities in multiple fields. So, right from the start, Pakistani leadership kept borrowing not just money but also ideas and philosophies from other players. And because everything has come without having to make efforts, there is certain indifference to the use of the materials and services it has acquired as a client-State, almost in the manner of greedy and hungry housewife that keeps picking things from the shelves of a department store, thoughtlessly, without any plan or scheme as to why a certain purchase is being made. And as it continued doing this, all it could accumulate was a national debt not in financial terms but also in terms of philosophical dependence, extremely addictive and possessive in nature.When a State finds itself in such a condition, it has little hope or chance to redeem itself from the clutches of a senseless addiction. As a client-State, Pakistan has lost that sense of its own identity, except the fact that it knows only one thing -- it can acquire anything from anywhere but not from within its own means and methods. Of course, over time, Pakistan has evolved its own method as a client-State. It has borrowed not just money from rich nations but also everything they would want to introduce by way of their larger strategies in their international realpolitik. So, from some countries, Pakistan obtained weapons. From Taliban, for example, it got terror techniques and tactics, and did not mind those becoming a tool in its regional politics. From others it acquired something else. It became a one-point market for many providers and made a hodge-podge of its own interests. Such things can happen only in a failed State. This client mentality has grown so strong in Pakistan that it started threatening even the United States, its long-time ally, with dire consequences if it -- the US -- opposed its model of politics replete with terror as a tool. Pakistan went to the extent of stressing that it would not mind distancing itself from the US and going closer to China. That approach was nothing but an unmitigated client-mentality which prompts the person to go to that shop that gives the maximum benefit as per its perception. You-supply-what-I-want-or-else-I-move-to-another-shop kind of a thing. And even as the threatening of the US was going on, a parallel friendship with China, too, was flourishing. All Pakistan wished to do was to conduct itself in the manner of a client who has no loyalty to any single provider, but is willing to shift shops in order to accrue cheap benefits. This is a classic example of the client-State mentality which Pakistan displays, a clear indication of a failed State. Apparently, of course, Pakistan appears to be getting what it wants. But in actual terms, it does not know what it wants. Hence the terrible flip-flop on terror and other issues. When a client is of such a superficial mental make-up, the market evolves quickly a method to exploit him. That is the reason why the Pakistani leadership is not in a position to oppose Taliban on terror or US on using its soil for its Asian operations or China on allowing its own strategies taking a precedence over Pakistani interests. After all, a client-State does not have an authentic mind of its own. Much to the contrary, it keeps getting lured by attractive price-tags that generally blind a buyer from the actual utility-quotient. Pakistan of today is nothing but a State whose leaders seem to serve multiple cross-purposes at the same time, not actually knowing what they wish to achieve out of that hodge-podge. In sharp contrast of Pakistan are India and China. Both these States, though with different goals and agendas, know what they want. Both have their own distinct personalities, and are aware of their position in the global arena. This comparison is necessary to understand what Pakistan has become over the years, in sharp contrast. When a State does not know what it wants, when its leadership does not have a set of firmed-up values on critical matters, the outcome is what Pakistan today is, a country with confused leadership. True, such a country does cause much distress in the neighbourhood, as Pakistan has done. Yet, that nuisance is not out of a planned action, but out of senseless pursuits of confused national goals. Of course, for Pakistan, Kashmir is the only point on its permanent agenda. It has developed a method and manner to pursue its Kashmir policy. India may not have an immediate answer to that poser, but over time, Pakistan is sure to wilt under its own burden of being a client-State. For, when a country fails as a State, it keep making itself weaker every passing moment. Such a State can be tackled with patience and persistence. So far at least, India has followed that approach with more or less success. From this point on, however, India would need a greater patience to allow Pakistan implode in time under its own burden of eternal client mentality.